Rational Natives.

• Author: Anderson, Terry L.
• Position: Review

The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, by Shepard Krech III, New York: W.W. Norton, 318 pages, $27.95

One of my favorite places in Montana is Madison Buffalo Jump State Park near the Three Forks of the Missouri River. Standing in front of this cliff over which Indians drove buffalo for hundreds of years, I imagine the sound and sight of a thundering herd of the halfton animals plunging over the cliff. Many would die from the fall, others would be crippled and have to be killed by Indians below, and some would crawl off to die. Signs at the park describe how the buffalo jumps were organized and depict how each part of the animal from the meat to the hoof to the hide was used. Framed by Montana's famous Big Sky and the Tobacco Root Mountains, the site can't help but conjure up a romantic image of American Indian life.

Shepard Krech's The Ecological Indian paints a very different picture--one far less romantic but more realistic. The Blackfoot word for such a place is piskun, and its literal meaning, "deep blood kettle," accurately describes the scene. Imagine 30, 60, 100--or even 1,000--dead and maimed beasts piled at the bottom of the cliff, blood flowing, hooves kicking, carcasses rotting in the hot sun. This is what you actually would have seen at a typical buffalo jump 250 years ago. Imagine the difficulty of butchering and preserving the meat--Krech estimates that if 600 died, the total could be as high as 240,000 pounds.

He vividly describes the likely scene at Olsen-Chubbuck, the most studied jump in Colorado, eight millennia ago: "As people butchered the animals, they ate the tongues, scattering the bones throughout the site. When it was over they had completely butchered the buffaloes on top, but they cut the ones beneath them less thoroughly, and hardly (if at all) touched the ones on the bottom, especially in the deepest parts of the arroyo." To complete the picture of camp life near a piskun, Krech, a Brown University anthropologist, reminds us that 200 to 300 people would be living near the stench of all that rotting meat without toilet facilities. Not surprisingly, diseases, especially dysentery, were common. Water was polluted, firewood would quickly be depleted, and grass would be overgrazed by horses.

Throughout The Ecological Indian, Krech systematically debunks popular myths--many of them promoted by politically motivated greens pushing draconian environmental measures--and instead brings reality to the history of...